New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier isn’t making a lot of friends at the moment. Not that he cares. (Or…hmmm…does he?)Just days after accusing Andrew Sullivan of anti-Semitism, Wieseltier trashes Martin Amis in the New York Times, a vicious review which prompted this retort from ex-Harvard prof Jim Sleeper:

The faults in Amis’ book are manifold, but Wieseltier’s puzzling envy and all-too-explicable bad faith are borne of bad conscience about his own continuously bad judgment about how to respond to September 11.

…Seldom has a reviewer hoisted himself on his own petard so shamelessly with so many grasps at faux paradoxes, sustained by his telltale, compulsive alliteration:

“Nothing creates confidence like catastrophe.” “[Amis] has a hot, heroic view of himself.” “In Amis’ universe, you are either religious or you are rational.” “The results of Amis’ clumsily mixed cocktail of rhetoric and rage can be eccentric, or worse” “For this reason, such writings will have more impact than influence.” “[Amis] appears to believe that an insult is an analysis.”

Ouch. Not only is Wieseltier writing in bad faith…he’s writing badly!
(An accusation that is sure to prick his swollen vanity.)

Why does all this matter? It matters, I think, because writers are still struggling to make sense of 9/11, to interpret that event in a useful way, because that is the kind of thing writers must do if they are to mean anything in today’s American culture, and because these are important questions with which to grapple.

These literary squabbles, one hopes, aren’t just personal and petty. They shouldn’t be. We have important things to talk and write about.

That’s another reason why Hillary’s desperate, frenzied condemnation of Jeremiah Wright (speaking of Hillary, as from time to time one must) is so unfortunate. This campaign—and Barack Obama, in particular—have provided the country with opportunities for serious conversations. Hillary is grinding those conversations underneath the boot of her own ambition. The stakes are too high to allow her to succeed.